Obsession
by Anbessette
Summary: Jerome Morrow lies in a hospital, burned beyond recognition after a second failed suicide attempt. Can Vincent save him once again? Jerome/Vincent slash.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Gattaca, and this is not for profit.

---

A pair of nurses walked past me as I was leaving the hospital.

"You look awful! Bad day?"

"Not really. It's nothing. I was just seeing to Mr Morrow and ..."

"That explains it. It'll take you a while to get used to patients like Jerome. You look at him and just want to cry, until he opens his mouth and you just want to hit him."

They continued down the hall, and I stood frozen in front of the door.

_Jerome Morrow_.

It wasn't, I reminded myself, the most uncommon of names. Still …

I turned around and headed towards the room the nurse seemed to have come from. The man in the bed was asleep, so I headed straight for his charts. I skimmed over his symptoms (severe) and treatment (the bare minimum required to keep him alive), looking for a genetic profile.

"Haven't seen you in here before," said a voice.

I started, almost guilty, and put the file down.

"I'm here for a meeting," I replied. My mind was working furiously. How were you supposed to ask someone a question like this? "I usually work at Gattaca Aerospace Corporation."

No reaction.

"Why are you here, then? I'm no astronaut."

"I'm not here as a doctor. I heard one of the nurses mention your name, and I think we might have a mutual friend. The name Vincent Freeman mean anything to you?"

Of course he would deny it, even if it was true. So I scrutinized the wreck of a face, searching for some hint of recognition. I thought I saw something in his eyes, but it was gone an instant later.

"No, I can't say that it does."

---

"I think I spoke to your namesake yesterday," I remarked to Vincent during his next substance test.

"Oh? That's more than I can say lately. Haven't seen him since I went up. Where was he?"

Though his face remained casual, as always, I heard a note of suppressed urgency in his voice.

"I wouldn't get your hopes up," I warned. "I'm not sure if it was him or not. The name can't be that unique, and he claimed not to know you."

"Well, he would. I know it's a big world, but it's still a possibility. What happened?"

"Not much to tell. I overheard a couple of nurses talking about him. One said that she wants to cry whenever she looks at him, until he starts to speak and makes her want to hit him."

Vincent smiled slightly. "That does sound like him … Nurse? Was he in hospital?"

"You didn't know that?"

"Like I told you, I haven't seen him since I went up. He was healthy when we said goodbye."

"It's not that he's ill. He's injured, pretty badly."

"How?"

The look on his face shocked me. I hadn't imagined he cared this much for his double, or for anyone. I respect and admire Vincent, and I'm also quite fond of him, but I'd never seen him demonstrate human emotion before.

I named the worst injury first.

"A broken back."

"I know that," said Vincent with something between relief and irritation. "It happened seven years ago. Is that all?"

"He's also suffered third degree burns to a large portion of his body."

"How the hell did that happen?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask him."

"Yes. I'll meet you after work and get the address of that hospital."

---

A/N: I know this chapter isn't very good, but it's necessary to set things up. The next one is better and much longer. Promise.


	2. Obsession

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update. I was intending to have this up within a few days of the prologue but life (in the form of a philosophy essay, a chemistry test, a minor role in a play, a sister departing for Japan and my muse kicking my butt about another story I'm working on) got in the way. Anyway, here it is.

I floated halfway between the waking world and the eerie peace of unconsciousness. As I began to rise, a dream brushed against the edge of my mind and I slammed on the brakes. I tried to drag myself back down into my subconscious, but I couldn't do that. I could hold myself where I was, however, and avoid completely losing the dream that called to me so strongly.

Since I wasn't properly asleep, I couldn't even see anything, only hear. There was nothing special to listen to, either – just an ordinary and unimportant conversation.

The reason I clung to it so desperately was that half of it was spoken in a voice I never expected to hear again. One that wasn't beautiful, but as familiar as my own heartbeat and a damn sight more welcome.

It sounds as if I'm talking about an old lover, doesn't it? I should clarify at this point that that's not the case. Far from it. I'm not sure if I'm even capable of feeling something like that. But in the absolute privacy of my semi-conscious mind, I could admit that I do love him. Though I haven't really belonged anywhere for most of my adult life, his voice felt like home. Though I can't remember the last time I was comfortable, his voice felt like comfort.

I rested contentedly in that in-between state until the conversation ended – and, ironically, it was only then that I managed to sink all the way back into sleep.

---

I woke up properly some time later. Scanning my small hospital room, I did a double take as my eyes landed on someone's face. He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite decipher – pity? affection? apprehension? – until he noticed my gaze and quickly wiped his face blank.

Had that dream been prophetic … Of course not. It hadn't been a dream at all. I'd overheard an actual conversation. So, Vincent really was sitting across the room from me.

I groaned.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"Of course I know you. What the hell are you doing here?"

He grinned. "So it _is_ you. Hello Eugene. Long time no see."

I realised that he hadn't recognised me until I spoke. That hurt, though there was no reason why it should. I didn't recognise myself in the mirror any more.

"Why are you here?"

"Why are _you_ here? What happened to you?"

"An accident," I said dismissively. "Why -"

"An accident. Like the 'accident that crippled you in the first place?"

I didn't answer. But for someone who knows me so well, that was answer enough.

"You IDIOT!" he exploded. He jumped up and strode over to me. His fists were clenched. "I'd beat the crap out of you if you hadn't already taken care of that part … What's wrong with you?"

"Burns, broken back. You?"

"Bad heart, a year to live," he retorted. "Why would you do this to yourself?"

"That's none of your business." I struggled to sit up, but someone had moved the strap out of my reach.

Vincent gave an incredulous laugh as he helped me up. The touch sent pain shooting through me.

"If it's not _my_ business, then whose is it?"

"No-one's but mine!"

The door opened and a young nurse stepped in. She looked terrified but determined. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave at once, sir -"

"He's staying," I snapped. "Get out! Can't you see we're in the middle of something?"

She scuttled out of the room, and presumably warned her colleagues to stay away too. We screamed at each other for hours without interruption.

I can't remember all we said – I think a lot of it was repetition anyway – but the gist of it was that Vincent wanted to kill me for wanting to kill myself and I was furious with him for being so furious with me.

"We don't owe each other anything," I yelled at one point. "I held up my end of the deal, I went above and beyond what I was contracted to do. Isn't that enough? Why can't you just go live your life and let me have mine?"

"Because you'd only throw it away!"

"So what? Why should you care? You've got everything you wanted from me."

"That's not the point. What about what you want? Because I refuse to believe you don't want more than this."

"Well, you're wrong. I don't want more, I want less! I never wanted this -" I indicated my lifeless legs - "or this -" I gestured at my scars - "I only wanted to die."

And round and round it went. Hours later, when our voices were hoarse and aching and Vincent had sunk down into a chair, we still glared at each other as though hoping our eyes could somehow force our point through the other's thick skull.

It occurred to me that he was not going to give up, he would do this forever if it came to it. He would tear us both to pieces trying to convince me I was worth keeping whole, and would not be persuaded that he was wrong about that.

The nurse stepped in again. "You really do need to leave this time," she said. "Visiting hours are over."

"Fine."

As he headed out, Vincent came over to the bed and awkwardly embraced me. I knew why he was doing it – all the years of history between us that couldn't be put into words and needed some sort of solid, physical expression – but pain exploded in my raw skin at the touch.

"Think about what I said," he told me.

As though I could have avoided that if I tried.

From outside the door, I heard her say "You will come again, won't you? It'll do him more good than anything we have to offer. I've never seen him look so alive before."

"I'll bet," said Vincent. "Don't worry, I'll be back. He'll have to do a lot more than that to get rid of me."

I resented that the nurse was talking to him about me behind my back, that she presumed to know what was good for me … but she was right. Fighting with Vincent had been unsettling, pointless and infuriating; and damn, it'd felt good. My throat was raw. My heart was pounding. My head was crowded with thoughts I really didn't want to deal with. I was still burning with anger, and was far too charged up to consider going to sleep. For the first time in years, I was _awake_. I was myself.

---

I am, and always have been, an obsessive personality. Like every part of my deepest nature, this trait was programmed into me by my creators. Oh, I'm not trying to claim that tunnel vision was mapped into my genome. But growing up in the hands of doctors, parents, tutors and coaches who take great pains to impress on you that Valids are built for a purpose, equipped with advantages many would happily die to give their children, can't be expected to produce particularly stable individuals.

I was born to be an athlete. For as long as I can remember, my entire life was geared towards the ultimate goal of a golden Olympic medal. Competitive swimming was my raison d'etre.

The worst part of it is that last sentence wasn't intended ironically. Perhaps it shows weakness of character, but I didn't resent the sport that consumed me – I loved it.

Though my parents had designed themselves an Olympian, they would probably have been satisfied with a son. It was my choice, and mine alone, to throw my soul into that pool.

And when the Olympics came and went and I failed to achieve the only goal I'd ever been aiming for, my life lost all meaning. I was as good as dead (though not in the way I wanted to be) when German found me and introduced me to the man who wanted to become me.

They say that borrowed ladders are parasites. For us, it was the other way round. I latched onto Vincent as if I were trying to suck the life out of him. I suppose I was, in a way. I used his ambition to reach the stars as a kind of prosthesis, a way to compensate for my own lack of ambition to even keep breathing, and gave him everything I had and was in return.

I pursued his (our) goal with the same single-minded devotion I'd once given my swimming career. Perhaps even more. At least back then I had a few other interests besides getting drunk. It isn't healthy to invest everything in one other person that way. But as suicide isn't especially healthy either, I chose the lesser of two evils.

Vincent's dream brought me out of my stupor. It got me relatively clean, got my body and mind working again, renewed my interest in life, gave me a purpose. It was only when success was close enough to touch that I realised nothing had changed after all. I hadn't been saved. I'd just traded one obsession for another, and with the reason for my existence hurtling off to Titan I was back at square one. And so I decided to finish what I'd started all those years ago.

I'd lived for Vincent, and planned to die for him too. It isn't as if burning was high on my list of ways to go. The idea gave me nightmares in the weeks leading up to it, and even blind drunk it took a supreme effort of will to pull the lever. But it was the only was to avoid the risk of someone discovering Jerome Morrow's corpse and asking how a dead man could be navigating Gattaca's latest mission.

I should have been more selfish and just taken pills or something. The bloody incinerator broke.

A neighbour broke down the door when he heard me screaming. God knows how I managed to say _anything_, but I can only assume I somehow communicated the emergency plan German drilled into us at the beginning. The hospital to go to and what to say there to ensure complete confidentiality. Because by the time I was lucid again I was here, and no-one's arrested me yet.

That's the long version of why my good mood didn't last long after Vincent left. It was the same hopeless hope I'd felt the first time he walked into my life, and I squashed it mercilessly. I had no intention of putting either of us through that again. It would only end with me trying to kill myself, maybe succeeding, more likely just getting horrifically injured. (The way things were going, I'd end up living the next fifty years as a head in a jar.) He had better things to do than try to save someone who was already dead; and as for me . . . I was just sick of the whole damn thing.

Despite myself, I dreamed about him that night. And found myself hoping he'd be stupid enough to follow through with his hastily made promise to come back.

---

He was sitting beside the bed when I opened my eyes the next morning.

"How are you doing?"

"Is that a trick question?"

He smiled blandly. "No, just a stupid one . . . It hurts to look at you."

"Try being me."

"Already did." He hesitated before continuing. "Look, Eugene . . . I didn't come here to fight. I think we've done enough of that. I want to talk to you."

"Sure. About politics, or the weather? How was Titan?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of why you refuse to look into skin grafts. You must know we can afford it."

His casual use of the word 'we' made my heart beat a little faster and my stomach clench with dread at the same time.

"You have no idea what you're getting into."

He leaned forward, suddenly angry. "For God's sake, you want to let me be the judge of that? You of all people should know better than to underestimate me. I know you. I've seen you at your worst. I've seen you drunk, stoned, passed out on the bathroom floor, nightmaring, hating the world, wanting to die. I know exactly what I'm getting into. _And I'm still here_."

Eyes blazing, he bent down and firmly pressed his lips to mine.

It wasn't like any other kiss I'd ever had. It wasn't an expression of desire or affection, it was . . . a pledge. _I'm still here_.

And I closed my eyes and kissed back. _You're going to live to regret this … and so am I._

"So," he said when we finally pulled apart. "About those skin grafts ..."


	3. Unselfish

A/N: I wrote this chapter a few months after 'Waiting', but it comes straight after 'Obsession' chronologically. After much thought, I decided to move 'Waiting' to chapter four for the sake of continuity. Sorry for any confusion.  
I expect the next chapter to require an M rating, so if this story appears to vanish, that's why.

* * *

It was officially declared some time ago that homosexuality is entirely natural for a portion of the population. Today, there is no-one who would even attempt to deny this except certain tiny groups of fundamentalists. But the days when 'natural' implied 'acceptable' are far behind us. Natural? So is epilepsy. And if we can eliminate that, surely it's possible to do the same in this case. Geneticists claim to have isolated the genes responsible for variations in sexuality and removed the trait from the next generation of Valids. (As a point of interest, they made the same assurance about alcoholism. You can judge for yourself how well that worked.)

Homophobia exists as a complicated form of genoism. The crusaders who fought against this type of discrimination so many years ago are thought of with respect. They are remembered the same way as those who defended the rights of the crippled and insane – noble people, in an age where such things were an unavoidable part of life, but irrelevant in today's society.

The number of homosexual and bisexual members of the population has plummeted with the rise of genetic engineering. The old estimate of ten percent has become ridiculous. The most cautious studies now suggest that it is closer to two. A cynical person might say that this has more to do with psychology than eugenics. Valids are raised to believe that attraction to their own sex is literally impossible for them. Like colour blindness or asthma, it just isn't in their genes. As for Invalids, though society doesn't particularly care what we do as long as we stay out of their way, there are those who prefer to avoid relationships that declare to the world "My genes aren't worth passing on!"

I was one of this kind. I pursued socially acceptable relationships with Valid girls who didn't want to know me, determined to prove that I was the equal of any Valid in this respect as in all others. In many ways, this determination served me well in life. Without it, I could never have achieved all the impossible things I did. But as a price for that, my drive left me callous, selfish and lonely. That began to change shortly after I came back to Earth, when I did the most unselfish thing I'd ever done in my life. I kissed Eugene.

Until that point, I'd been more or less solely for my own benefit. Very little in the world seemed to matter when compared with the desperate urge to fly, to explore, to _escape_. For so long, everything I did was for that all-consuming reason. But the tug on my heart when I saw him lying in that hospital bed, burned and broken and defeated, was beyond anything I'd ever felt before. It was like pain and anger and fear and pity and sorrow and betrayal and guilt. And love. And wanting.

It seems bizarre that something I wanted so much could come to symbolise selflessness to me, even more so than saving a life. But in my defence, of all the things you usually want when you're kissing someone – like pleasure and closeness and sex, or co-operation, silence and an alibi – I wasn't thinking of any of them. This time all I wanted was for him to snap out of it, to start living again. I didn't even consider where I expected it to lead. It was simply the first way that popped into my mind to tell him _I'm still here._

But he kissed back, and the whole thing suddenly got a lot more complicated. It was no longer about me proving a point; or at least, not the point I'd intended. It was simply about kissing Eugene. While I'm not going to pretend that's something I'd never thought about before, it wasn't something I'd ever expected to actually happen. And certainly not like this.

It was hard to read that ravaged face. Though it was clear that he was at least as stunned as I was by what had just happened, I had no way of telling what else he might be feeling. I didn't give him a chance to let me know.

"So," I said "about those skin grafts ..." As if it had just been another stage in our argument.

There was a moment of sheer terror as I waited for him to respond. But then he sighed, and said "OK. You win. I'll do it."

"You'll ..."

"I'll get the goddamn skin grafts."

"Really?" I had _not_ expected it to be this easy. It was Eugene. After five years together, I could count the arguments I'd won on one hand.

"Yes, really. I'll talk to my doctor next time I see her. Do you want a blood oath?"

"No."

"Was there anything else you wanted to say?"

There was, but I clamped down on that firmly before it could slip out. I'd already risked enough. He'd agreed to the treatment; it was time to quit while I was ahead.

"No, that's about it."

"Does that mean I can ask about your trip now?"

How could I possibly resist? My voyage into space was a topic I could happily spend hours on. But until now, I hadn't. Jerome Morrow was cool, casual, almost emotionless. He was dedicated to the success of the mission, but regarded it with the same impassive nonchalance he did everything else. There was nothing remarkable about it for him – it was simply the next step in his already impressive career. Vincent Freeman was the impassioned astronomy geek who watched a dozen launches a day, whose dreams had all come true when he finally took part in one himself. And Eugene was the only person who knew he existed.

"Was it all you hoped for?"

"Yes. And more than I ever imagined."

I told him all about it. About the awe-inspiring sight of the Earth falling away beneath us, then watching it shrink away until it was no more than a blue dot, finally disappearing altogether. About being contained in a tin can hurtling through the vacuum of space. About our path right through Saturn's rings, and sinking through the fog to land on Titan. And about the minutiae of life on the ship; the cramped quarters and the zero g. I'd thought of Eugene a lot while I was floating around up there. I'd once told him that he should be going instead of me, because it would mean his legs didn't matter. Now that I'd lived it, I couldn't quite bring myself to give the experience up, even hypothetically, even for him. But I still wanted that for him, more than ever before.

"I wish I could take you up and show you what it was like. It was _fun. _Turned your perception upside down and sideways and just scrambled it. It was like swimming, but with no resistance at all. The muscular atrophy was terrible, though. Even walking seemed hard when I got back, and the training sessions … I had a hell of job synthesising an appropriate heartbeat."

"Sorry I wasn't there to help."

"No, don't be. It wouldn't have made a difference. _Your_ muscles were fine – inducing that level of stress would have been even more of a headache than mixing my heartbeat with your old recordings. I had to ask Lamar for help more than once."

"You told your doctor?"

"He found out for himself. The first day he met me, as it turns out, though I didn't know he knew until five minutes before the launch. He was the one who told me you were here."

"I assumed he did. Though when he first came to question me, I thought he was more likely to tell the Hoovers … Are you sure he hasn't?"

"I haven't been arrested. I call that a good sign."

"Then are you sure he's not going to? Or going to blackmail you with it?"

"I'm sure. Lamar's on our side."

"No-one is ever really on our side except us. You can't trust him so much, Vincent. You shouldn't trust anyone."

"Do you realise how ironic it is to expect me to trust that statement?"

"I meant anyone except me, and don't be flippant."

"You're trusting everyone in this hospital. They all know you as Jerome Morrow, even though your medical history says the opposite of what they can see with their own eyes ..."

"I don't exactly have any choice in the matter. And German vouches for them."

"So you trust German?"

"Not as far as I can throw him. But as long as we're paying him, and can expose him if it comes down to it, he's not going to get us caught."

"Neither is Lamar. Look, _I_ vouch for him. If he wanted to turn me in, he would have done it a long time ago. He's a decent man. The closest thing I've had to a friend since I came back."

"What about that blonde girlfriend of yours? Or don't you talk to her outside the bedroom?"

"I don't talk to Irene at all any more except about work. We split up."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't love her. I was only dating her in the first place because she was helping the police with the murder investigation."

"Don't believe you."

"It's the truth. But I don't mean … it's not that every moment I spent with her was part of some plot. I liked her. She was smart and beautiful and it killed me to see how little she valued herself. At first it was about the investigation, but I really did end up caring about her. Just … not enough. Not enough for me to want to stay once I didn't need her any more."

"No. You wouldn't have spent your last night on Earth with her if you weren't in love with her -"

"I wasn't with Irene that night, I was with Anton."

"You really must think I'm an idiot. I know you went to see him. Your girl was parked outside our building all night, then when you came staggering home, dripping wet, at four o'clock in the morning you joined her."

_You were looking out the window until four in the morning?_

"What was I supposed to do, just leave her there without saying goodbye? I owed her more than that, after all she'd done for me. Besides, I don't know if I had the energy to make it inside. I might have stayed out there until dawn even if she wasn't there."

"I suppose so. It was too long ago to argue about now. And frankly, now you've brought it up I'm more curious about what happened before you passed out against her car. You said you had to meet him – but why?"

I hesitated. Though it had made perfect sense at the time, the thought of trying to explain that the only way to settle things had been to beat my brother in a swimming race was a daunting prospect. But if anyone in the world would understand (or, at least, refrain from questioning my sanity), it would be Eugene.

"We were … sort of racing. In the ocean. To prove that I didn't need any help from him, and remind him that he needed _my_ help last time we tried it. It's something we did when we were kids. We'd swim out as far as we could and see who was the first to turn back."

Eugene stared at me incredulously for a long time, no doubt thinking of just how many hours we'd spent out there, before he finally dissolved into laughter.

"German was right," he gasped when he could speak again. "We _are_ perfect for each other. Who else is there that thinks a swimming contest is worth dying for?"

No-one I'd ever met. And, perhaps even more importantly, I couldn't think of anyone else who'd find that statement remotely funny. But there we were, sitting in a hospital near hysterical with laughter over our mutual disregard for our lives. And that should have disturbed or saddened me, at least on some level, but it didn't. It just felt good to be with Eugene again, to take off the mask, to laugh with someone because we both thought the same thing was funny.

"I missed you," I said once we'd regained a little composure – or, possibly, run out of breath.

"I wish I had my legs back."

The strangeness of this stunned me back into seriousness. In all the time we'd known each other, I'd never heard him say that before.

"I want to swim again," he continued. "We could race ..."

An image flashed into my mind. Like a memory of that final night, but this time the man who stood beside me on the beach was Eugene. We were laughing, much like we had been a few moments ago, and there was no hint of the grim tension that had always been there during my contests with Anton. The air crackled with something entirely unlike sibling rivalry as we stripped off our clothes and plunged into the ocean.

The pragmatist in me put an abrupt end to that daydream. I shook my head firmly. "Not a chance," I said. "I was a match for my brother, but you were an _Olympian_. I know I'm an arrogant bastard, but even I don't think that highly of myself."

"I'd go easy on you."

We sat in melancholy silence for a while, acutely aware of how impossible the scenario we were discussing really was.

"I've been talking about myself ever since I got here," I said, in a terribly ill thought out attempt to lighten the mood. "How have you been?"

Eugene gave me his classic 'How can you possibly be this stupid?' look. (At least, I assume he did. I couldn't detect much expression under the scars. But the air felt like one of those looks.)

"Every day is agony."

"Right. Of course. Why did it take until now for you to decide on the skin grafts? Even if you aren't interested in rehabilitation, it'd help with the pain."

"I was hoping the pain medication would build up in my system and kill me."

The answer I should have expected hit me like a blow to the stomach.

His voice sounded almost apologetic as he said "I won't lie to you."

He'd seen the stricken look on my face, and thought it was because his reasoning bothered me. He was wrong. His attitude was upsetting, but I counted the fact that I was finally acknowledging that as a good thing. What bothered me was the memory of all the times he'd said something like this before (usually while drunk, granted, but _in vino veritas_) and I'd brushed it off. In particular, I was thinking of one night in the week leading up to the mission. He'd told me about his suicide attempt and added 'If at first you don't succeed …' I'd just told him to go to sleep. Then I came back and had the nerve to act surprised about finding him in here. For some reason, the guilt made me want to kiss him again.

"What changed?"

"You came in and yelled at me."

Spoken as if that answer was not only reasonable, but obvious. The urge to kiss him became nearly overwhelming, and I was attempting to remind myself that there was no place I could touch without hurting him (a consideration I'd overlooked last time) when a nurse cracked the door open and informed us of the time. I seized the excuse with both hands, and practically fled the room.


	4. Touch

A/N: As you may have guessed from the new rating, this chapter contains scenes of a sexual nature. Tread cautiously (or gleefully, according to preference.) Sorry about the long wait, hopefully the fact that this is the longest chapter so far will make up for it a little. Oh, and 'Waiting' is now Chapter 5. Because I like messing with you, that's why.

* * *

Vincent didn't come back the next morning. I was irrationally disappointed at first, but quickly deduced that if he'd been here the last two days, this was probably Monday.

I'd done more talking over the last weekend than I had in the previous two years, and it had left me feeling sociable. I nodded a greeting to the little nurse who came in to check on me. She looked so utterly thrilled that I felt almost ashamed.

"Good morning, Mr Morrow! How are you today?"

I stared at her in silence, trying to think of a way to respond that wouldn't reduce her to tears again. The girl was too soft for this job.

But apparently she'd grown since our encounter last week. Barely two seconds passed before she bit her lip and muttered "Have to stop saying that at work. Never mind. Do you want anything?"

"I want to see Ingrid Cowper. Can you organise it?"

"I can probably manage something," she said hesitantly. "Is she a friend of yours?"

"She's a burns specialist. I think I'm officially her patient, but I haven't seen her for a while now."

"Oh! Sorry, I'm new, I don't know all the doctors' names yet. Of course, I can do that. I'll call her today and set up an appointment for you."

"Thank you."

"No problem at all, Mr Morrow."

A few hours later, a nurse who I vaguely recalled was named Evelyn informed me that Dr Cowper would be coming to see me the next day at two. Then left. I hadn't realised until now just how long the days were, or how much of them I spent alone.

My mind drifted as I lay there waiting for the time to pass, and settled on Irene. Vincent's girlfriend … or not. Pleasant as that news was, it was quite a shock. For most of our history together, I would have accepted it without question if Vincent had told me he was dating a girl to get information out of her. In fact, that was probably the only reason I would have believed. But because he'd gone out of his way to spend his last week on Earth with her and, more to the point, lied to me about it, I'd thought Irene must be special. I'd been convinced that he really was in love with the sombre blonde woman. I'd been glad. Jealous as all hell, but on balance, glad. The knowledge that he'd have someone with him when he came back, that he wouldn't be alone, had chased away the last of my scruples about my plan.

I eventually fell asleep. It was late afternoon before a nurse fiddling around with the various tubes and gadgets attached to me woke me up. It was the same one from this morning. She smiled hesitantly when she saw I was awake.

"Hi there. Did you hear about your appointment?"

"Yes. I want you to do something for me."

"What is it?"

"Call someone and tell him about it."

"Sure thing. What's his name?"

I looked at her coldly. "Does that matter?"

"Well, yes, a little bit." I didn't say anything, and after a while she sighed and said "It's not that important. What's the number?"

I told her as she picked up the phone beside my bed. (God only knows why they put it there, as it should be obvious to anyone looking at me that I'm not capable of picking it up, let alone holding it to my ear.)

"Hello. This is Bethany from St Roch's Hospital. I'm calling to let you know that Jerome Morrow has an appointment with a burns specialist tomorrow at 2 pm." She hung up. "It was an answering machine."

"I know."

"Do you mind telling me why you suddenly want to see Dr Cowper? Not that you have to, I'm just curious, I suppose..."

"I want to discuss treatment."

Bethany's smile was practically blinding. "That's _wonderful_!" She gushed at me until a patient down the hall mercifully pressed his call button. She waved as she left the room. I was beginning to think I'd preferred her when she was afraid of me.

* * *

The next day, Vincent arrived fifteen minutes before Ingrid Cowper did.

"What are you doing here?"

"This is the right time, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to come!"

"Then why tell me about it?"

Good question. "So you couldn't accuse me of breaking my word."

He rolled his eyes at me. "Trust is a wonderful thing in a relationship, isn't it ..."

"Don't you have a job to be at?"

"I told them there was a family crisis I had to deal with."

"Is that wise? If they decided to check up on you - "

"Yes, I know," he said irritably. "I can handle it."

Bethany stepped in. "I'm so sorry, sir, but I'm afraid you can't stay. It's not our policy to let guests be present during consultations with doctors. Unless they're family, of course."

"I am."

"OK." She held up a portable ident-check. "Could I just get you to confirm that?"

Don't look alarmed. That's the crucial thing.

"You can put that away, we're not related," I said. "He's my partner."

"Oh." Bethany blinked at us a few times before finally pulling herself together. "Yes, that's … that's all right, I suppose. Yes. Um … Dr Cowper will be here in a few minutes, I'll just – um." She stared intently at the clipboard in her hands and fell silent.

Vincent and I met each other's eyes over her shoulder. What I could see behind his Jerome face was mostly relief. Good. I'd saved him, he had no right to object to the way I did it. It was the only way. And anyway, it was true. We'd been partners in crime for years now.

Dr Cowper didn't question his presence when she arrived. Her reaction when I told her what I wanted was, thankfully, nowhere near as exuberant as Bethany's. She seemed both pleased and irritated, and wanted to know why I hadn't let her do it two years ago, before the scar tissue had a chance to build up. I had no answer to give, but she didn't press for one.

"This is usually where I'd go over the theory of what I plan to do, but you've already heard the spiel plenty of times."

"I haven't," said Vincent. "Could you explain again?"

"Of course." She looked at him for the first time since she'd come in. "In the early days of this procedure, swathes of skin would be taken from another area of the body and grafted onto the site of the injury. But as you can see, that's of limited usefulness in cases like this. Doctors experimented with artificial skin and donations from animals or other people, but common practice now is to grow the required skin in a lab from samples of healthy skin cells. Though in your case, Jerome, finding any of those could present some difficulty."

There was more than she could ever need back at home in carefully labelled test tubes. But I wasn't going to tell her so. For one thing, I was almost certain that she already knew that, and just wanted to see if we'd offer up the information. For another, she wouldn't have been harassing me about this procedure so persistently if there was a chance she couldn't do it. Her eyes moved from me back to Vincent once it became clear that I wasn't playing along. I could have laughed at her if that wouldn't have spoiled the whole charade. He wasn't going to crack any more easily. My friend has one hell of a poker face. He has to.

Sure enough, a smile flashed in her eyes before she continued smoothly "I think our best bet is inside the ear canal. Now, including the time taken to grow the new skin, this procedure usually takes around three to four weeks to complete. Considering the sheer number of grafts we'll be attempting on you, we'll have to at least double that time. And of course, the risks are -"

"I know."

"I don't. Go on, Dr Cowper."

So she began her list. Infection. Blood loss. My body rejecting the transplant. She assured him that these issues were preventable with proper care. The only exception was the last, but the risk of rejection was drastically reduced by using my own tissue. And they would begin their work on my legs, the parts I could most afford to damage, in case of any complications.

"There is one other issue. It's more … cosmetic than anything else. The skin on one's lips has an entirely different composition than that on the rest of the body, and I'm afraid I won't be able to find any undamaged samples of those cells."

"I think I can help you with that," said Vincent. "Twins have the same genetic code, right? I could contact Eugene, ask him to send some samples. I'm sure he'd be willing to help."

"That would be an ideal solution," said Ingrid, almost warmly. She handed Vincent her card. "Have them sent to my lab at this address. Well – that about covers all we need to for the time being. I'll be in touch. And might I say, I'm very glad you've finally agreed to this."

She departed. Once I was sure she was gone, I commented "A twin brother. Nice save."

"You too, with … arranging for me to stay."

_By saying that you were my partner. The nurse thinks we're a couple. Because I told her so. Does that bother you? Considering the fact that you kissed me two days ago and haven't said a word about it since?_

I couldn't bring myself to actually say any of that.

* * *

As I was being prepared for the first of my many surgeries, Evelyn said abruptly "I feel like I should thank you."

"For what?"

"For Beth. You've restored her faith in humanity."

"Did I? It was quite unintentional." That sounded sarcastic, but I was honestly surprised. I hadn't given much thought to Bethany at all, and if it had come up I certainly wouldn't have thought she had any deficit in faith.

"She's a sweet young girl who wants to save the world, and thought she could because she had no idea what a dark place it really is. She cares for you. She cares for all her patients, of course, and her colleagues and most people she passes on the street, but her heart broke for you, for the pain she couldn't save you from even if you'd let her. Meeting you proved to her that life isn't about sunshine and happiness, and that terrible things happen that can't be undone. And now you've shown her that there's still hope."

I shifted uncomfortably. There wasn't much I could say to the revelation that my ever chirpy little nurse had actual feelings. That she meant it when she smiled at me and offered help. "I didn't mean to," I said at last. "I ..." I like her, I'd meant to say, but I wasn't sure if that was true. She irritated me. "Bethany's a nice girl, but I never meant to give her any epiphanies. I really couldn't care less about her faith in humanity."

"She cares about you," repeated Evelyn. She was older than Beth, and her smile more world weary and amused. "Whether you meant it to happen or not, the fact that you go on living is vitally important to her."

"That's going around," I said glumly.

Evelyn chuckled. "I know," she said. "Poor Jerome – it must be such a burden, being surrounded by all these people who care whether you live or die. It's almost like you're part of the human race!"

She was mocking me. But it was true. The weight of their concern was threatening to crush me. It was disconcerting to realise that my decisions weren't just _my_ decisions, that what I did with my life could have more than superficial effects for other people. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about Vincent when I was planning my demise. On the contrary. But once I'd prepared all the samples and arranged not to be found, I thought that was the extent of my obligation to him. It hadn't occurred to me that he'd be upset. And of course, I realised now that he'd had a right to be – I'd lied to him and abandoned him – but Bethany? Ingrid? I'd never done a thing to them except make their jobs more difficult, and yet they still _cared_. It was baffling. And overwhelming.

* * *

Two gruelling months later, it was all over. I looked like a human being again, I was ready to leave St Roch's and I didn't hurt at all. This last part was particularly astonishing. In the two years I'd been here I'd almost forgotten what the absence of pain was like. Ingrid clasped my hands warmly and Bethany hugged me the day I left. I didn't object – they'd been good to me, and I wasn't so far gone that I could fail to appreciate the show of affection from two attractive women. But, although my new skin was all but screaming for human contact, it wasn't them I wanted to touch.

Vincent stood in the doorway, watching the goodbye scene with a faintly amused smile. He'd been here for at least an hour every day during my recovery. We'd quickly fallen back into the habit of shared lives and easy companionship, and had never mentioned that kiss again. But it had been on my mind almost constantly, the answer whenever I wondered why I was putting myself through this.

"Ready to go?" he said when Beth finally released me.

We headed out to the carpark together, and I wished I new what had happened to my old chair. The one I'd been provided with just wasn't the same. The wheels kept sticking. By the time we were halfway to the car I was struggling, and Vincent stepped behind me and took the handles. He pushed it easily, almost effortlessly, and I realised the problem wasn't the chair. It was my arms. They'd all but wasted away after two years of inactivity. Considering the state of my legs, I was a little surprised by how much that bothered me.

"I could show you some of the exercises they taught us after we came back," he said. "They're designed to get your muscles back to normal as quickly as possible. I think I've got all the equipment you'd need at home."

I was a little irritated that he'd put my thoughts into words like that. But because I knew that wasn't rational, I just gritted my teeth and thanked him.

I saw him barely stop himself from welcoming me into my own home when we walked through the door. And before he had a chance to think of anything else to say, I jumped in.

"It's time we talked about what happened at the hospital."

"What?"

"Don't insult me, you know what I'm talking about. That kiss."

"Right." He turned to face me, with obvious reluctance. "We're not ignoring that anymore?"

"No, we're not. Well?" He just hesitated, and I decided to make it easier for him. "Was it supposed to be a bribe?"

"What? No! You think I'd do that?"

I shrugged.

"It wasn't something I planned. I don't know why I did it. To shut you up, maybe, or prove a point. But nothing like that."

I would have accepted it if he'd said yes. I'd have been a little offended on principle, but not enough to stop me from collecting. Still, I was glad that it was … like this. I reached for his hand, but lost my nerve at the last moment and settled on his wrist instead. Despite the fact that I'd been doing this in my imagination for a very long time, the reality was new to me, and still a little strange. I'd touched him before, of course – the nature and duration of our relationship meant we'd long since passed the point where embarrassment about each other's bodies would be ludicrous – but only ever for practical reasons.

"You can't just kiss me to win an argument," I said.

"I know."

"As long as that's clear."

I tugged at his wrist, gently at first then more forcefully when he didn't seem to understand, and pulled him down to my height. Once I could reach, I kissed him.

The newly repaired skin of my lips wasn't used to this kind of stimulation, and a soft, moist mouth pressed against my own left my mind completely, dizzyingly blank. It only lasted a few seconds before Vincent pulled away.

"Weren't you just saying we shouldn't do that?"

"I said not just to win an argument."

The worried look on his face faded into a smile, one of the largest I'd ever seen from him. His frantic enthusiasm as he covered my mouth with his dispelled any remaining concerns that I'd somehow misread this thing between us, and I responded in kind. I slid my tongue along his lips, and felt his brush against it just as a sharp jerk went through his body.

"Was that ..." I began uncertainly, but he quickly shook his head.

"My leg started to cramp from bending down like this," he explained.

Settling back on his heels, he looked at me contemplatively, like I was one of those horrific equations he used to spend so much time on. A solution seemed to fall into place and, a little awkwardly, he climbed into the chair, arranging his legs on either side of mine. He ended up half kneeling on the seat, half sitting on my lap.

"Is this all right?"

"Very."

His face was very close, but he didn't try to move any closer. Instead he just said, with something like amazement, "You're a Valid."

Didn't he know by now that as far as I was concerned, rules just didn't apply to him? It might have been understandable if I'd been disturbed by feeling so drawn to another man, at least in the beginning, but that had never been an issue. My obsession with Vincent had been a simply a fact of life to me for almost as long as we'd known each other; it had seemed only natural that it would flow into this area too.

"Well, it isn't as if this is the most low-gene thing I could do. The relationship we already have is still worse. It'd be a little pointless to start worrying about what's appropriate _now_."

"Fair point."

I looked at him thoughtfully. "_You're_ an Invalid."

"I was pretending not to be." He pushed a strand of hair away from my face as he added "Pretending got harder after I met you."

That was enough talking for the time being. I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned forward to kiss him. And although this felt much more intimate than what we'd been doing a few minutes ago, there was nothing strange about it. I hadn't expected it to be bad, but from the way people whispered about this sort of thing (a mental illness, a hormonal imbalance … something I was supposed to be immune to, at any rate), I'd assumed it would be somewhat disconcerting. It wasn't. Vincent's lean body seemed to fit perfectly in my arms.

After a long round of increasingly passionate kissing, I suggested "Bedroom?"

"Yes." He slid off my lap and took hold of the handles again. "I never thought this would actually happen."

"Really? I've been thinking of nothing else for the past two months."

Once we reached my room, I pulled myself onto the bed as he began to undress. I told myself not to stare, then realised that was stupid and stared freely. I eventually managed to tear my eyes away long enough to remove my own shirt. He came to sit on the bed, and tugged my pants off. His expression changed.

"Is something wrong?" he said.

Strange, I was about to ask him the same question.

"No. Why?"

He didn't answer, and there were several seconds of confused silence before his eyes dropped to my crotch. I realised what the problem was. God, it really had been much too long if I'd forgotten about that.

"Same thing that's been wrong with me for the past seven years."

"Oh."

He looked at me blankly for a while, then lay down next to me. Not touching me. With about a foot of space between us and his hands over his face. I waited in case he just needed a moment, but he didn't move.

"I didn't say I didn't want to have sex," I said.

"Isn't that impossible?"

"No. The therapist they foisted on me after the accident kept saying that my sex life was only over if I wanted it to be." No need to tell him that conversation had ended with me throwing a glass of water at her. I could see her point now. "And I don't want it to be. There are things we can do that don't require ..." My voice trailed off as he shook his head.

"I can't … I'm not a rapist, Eugene."

"Good to know. I'm not a bank robber. Now we've got that off our chests, can we get on with it?"

"I'm serious. I don't want to use you."

"That's ridiculous. You do nothing but use me, it's the whole premise of our relationship."

I saw him wince and wanted to kick myself. That was probably the worst thing I could possibly have said.

"Sorry. It's not … I don't _mind_. It is what I signed up for."

"Maybe. But this isn't."

"That's probably a good thing. If this was mentioned in our contract it'd make at least one of us a prostitute." There might be advantages. He wouldn't be able to get out of it, for one thing. "Want to write a new clause?"

For a moment he looked as if he was about to laugh. "No."

"I don't see why this has to be such a problem. I know you've slept with women; surely none of them were sporting erections." It occurred to me as I was saying it that I knew nothing of the sort – I only had evidence that he'd slept with one woman, and even that looked less certain than it had a few months ago. _Interesting, but not immediately relevant_, I decided, pushing the thought aside.

"That's not the point. They could at least feel what was going on – they could orgasm! That's kind of important, don't you think?"

I felt like he'd hit me. It was one thing to privately shake my fists at the sky over what I'd lost when I broke my back. To have it thrown in my face by the man I – by my – by someone I trusted, the first person who'd looked at me without pity after the accident … that was different. And it hurt.

"Fuck. I'm sorry, Eugene. God, that was such a stupid thing to say. I just meant … it feels wrong. Selfish. When I'd enjoy it so much, but it wouldn't do anything for you."

I went temporarily deaf as he reached over to touch me. There was nothing sexual about the way he gripped my arms, still talking, his eyes warm and concerned; but my new skin was extremely sensitive and the feel of his slightly roughened palms rubbing against it made me ache inside.

"... were right, I'm always using you. But I don't want to do that anymore. You've already given me so much, and I know you said you got the better end of the deal but I just can't believe that, and I can't let you do this for me too."

He clearly meant it. There ought to be a word for moments like this, when you want to punch someone and suck his dick at the same time.

"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. I've had more than enough time to come to terms with the fact that I'll never do _that_ again. Why does that mean I have to give up all the other aspects of sex? Or that you have to give up anything?" The look on his face made me reconsider that line of argument. At the moment he seemed positively eager to give something up. "You're not being selfless here Vincent, you're being condescending! Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can't do? What I shouldn't want? I'm paralysed, not dead. I still have eyes and hormones and feelings and _it's been two years since I could touch anyone without pain!_ Do me the courtesy of listening to me when I say I want you!"

I fell silent as understanding dawned on me. The shell-shocked looked on his face as I listed my reasons for wanting to do this made it painfully obvious that none of them had even occurred to him. He'd only been thinking of sex, for the most basic motives.

"Oh. I see." I tried to keep my voice normal. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. "If it isn't just about getting off, if it's about the energy and intimacy and emotional pleasure, it can't just be fucking. It might actually mean something, God forbid."

"Where did you get that?" His grip on my arms tightened. "It's you and me. Of course it's going to mean something." He kissed me, almost tentatively, then drew back with a rueful sigh. "This isn't going well. Do you want to forget about it for a while? Get drunk for now, and try this again tomorrow?"

"Do you?" I pressed my lips against his, simply because it occurred to me that I could.

His eyes fluttered closed. "No, not really."

He rolled over to lie on top of me, and kissed my neck. I couldn't suppress a gasp.

"What?"

"I love modern medicine," I said fervently. "This skin they made me is incredible."

He laughed, and tension I'd barely noticed was there seemed to fade. Perhaps he'd finally realised that I could enjoy this after all. That was the last moderately coherent thought I had for a while. I don't know how long we spent like that, pressed close together, kissing and stroking and caressing. It felt wonderful.

After some time, I became vaguely aware that while I was touching every part of Vincent I could reach, his hands stayed strictly above my waist. And though I was moved by his consideration, I didn't want him to hold back.

"You can touch below my waist if you want to."

"I am. Just not with my hands." He smiled slightly at my confusion (in my defence, the situation was making it rather hard for me to think) and said "Look down."

Our legs were twined together, with my thigh between his own. I wished desperately for a moment that I could feel that. I stared down at my foot, as if I could use telekinesis to rub it against the scar on his calf.

"Besides," he continued, "there's nothing wrong with above your waist."

He brushed a thumb over my nipple. A very good distraction. What-ifs and might-have-beens abandoned ship.

"How did they do this?"

"They used the skin from my lips."

Bending his head down, he kissed it. I actually whimpered as his tongue flicked out, and felt his lips curve into a smile.

"Yeah, feels the same," he said, far too matter-of-factly.

I reached between his legs and gently squeezed. He gave a strangled gasp, and his eyes snapped shut as I began rhythmically stroking up and down.

"Turn over. Lie on your back," I said.

He did so, and I used my elbows to drag myself down the bed. Gripping his hipbones, I took him in my mouth.

He groaned softly. "God, Jerome ..."

I couldn't remember the last time he'd called me that. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not.

I'd never done this before, but I'd been in Vincent's position often enough to give me a fair idea of what to do. And I judged from the wordless sounds he was making that I was managing quite well. His breathing sped up and became more erratic, and I felt the muscles in his abdomen tense beneath my hands. Then, with a cry of "Eugene!" he was coming. I tasted salt, swallowed, and pulled away.

I crawled back up the bed to lie beside him. He slung an arm across my chest and pressed a kiss to my collar bone. Running my hands over his back, I idly wondered how many of the skin cells he so carefully scraped off tomorrow would be mine. He was still breathing heavily, with a dazed, blissful smile on his face. After the fight we'd had leading up to this, I'd wondered if I'd feel resentful about that. To my relief, I didn't. A little smug, maybe. Mostly just content.

"No-one's done that before," he said.

"You've led a deprived life."

"Oh. No, I just meant … in my experience, people spit into a test tube afterwards."

"I don't need to have you sectioned. I already know everything about you."

"I love you."

And with that, the simple happiness I'd been basking in disappeared, just as if I'd had a bucket of cold water thrown on me. I was in the unique and unenviable position of being unable to say those words back to him both because my own feelings were too strong, and because they were nowhere near enough.

It would terrify Vincent to know how much he meant to me. I knew that with a cold certainty. He was the only thing in life that I could honestly say I wanted. The only thing that could interest me, or make any of it seem to matter. Everything I'd done from the day we met had been, in one way or another, motivated by him. I couldn't imagine spending my life with anyone else – but it was more than that. I couldn't imagine my life _at all_ unless it was with him. I was obsessed with him. But I still had enough sense to know that no-one in their right mind would call that love. It was just a symptom of how truly damaged I was.

He must have felt me freeze up. Twisting his head up to look at me, he asked "You still there, Eugene? Shouldn't I have said that?"

I could only shake my head. If he was telling the truth – and if I knew him at all, there was little reason to doubt that – it was the best thing anyone had ever said to me. "Say whatever you want." Damn it, that came out wrong. "I was … glad. To hear it." If that was the closest I was going to get to an 'I love you too', it was pathetic. Try again. "You make me feel..." But I trailed off helplessly. I was not good at this.

A sad smile flickered across his face. "Yeah. You make me feel too."

Instead of looking for an answer to thar, I just hugged him. Though that wasn't what I'd been trying to say, it was exactly what I meant. The fact that Vincent understood … well, it went to show that there were good reasons for him to occupy my every waking thought. Maybe it wasn't love, but it was close enough that the difference didn't seem worth worrying about anymore.


	5. Waiting

A/N: Another chapter? I'm as surprised as you are. Thanks to my reviewers for convincing me to go on with this – you have magic idea sparking powers. Literally half an hour after I told Dorren Golde that the story really is complete and may or may not ever have a sequel, this popped into my mind.

I've removed the "Could be taken as friendship" part from the summary because that's no longer the case. There's nothing graphic, but no amount of squinting can make this look like it's not slash. Just a heads up for anyone who's not into that.

* * *

It's almost midnight, and I can't sleep. I absent-mindedly run my hand down Eugene's chest. It's almost a compulsion for me nowadays. His new skin is still shockingly smooth and soft – like a baby's, I'd imagine, though he'd kill me if I ever said so. Technically, it _is_ baby skin. Grown at the hospital from samples of his cells just a few months ago. It's strangely fitting for him to be getting a new life as mine winds to a close.

As the thought crosses my mind, I reach for my wrist to feel my pulse. That's Irene's tic, not mine – I used to chastise her for it during the time we dated. Now I finally understand why she does it.

I wasn't expecting to die this way. To have to wait for it. In all honesty, I always thought I'd die in space.

I wasn't planning on it or anything, the way Eugene did. I wanted to live. Just not as much as I wanted to be among the stars.

Back when I was applying to aerospace programs under my own name, they usually just said no. That I wasn't suitable – Invalid. But there was one man who seemed to like me and went out of his way to explain.

He said it wasn't genoism. That if it was just a matter of determination and intelligence he'd be proud to have me on his team. The fact was, however, that someone with my heart was not physically capable of space travel. I'd never be able to make it. I'd _die_.

When I said I'd risk it, he just shook his head. But I meant it. I'd pay whatever price it took to get me into space, and if that price happened to be my death, it would still be worth it. Somewhere along the line, the willingness to die turned into the conviction that I would.

When I found myself out of Earth's orbit and on my way to Titan and _still alive_, the relief was incredible. I had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and come out the other side. I didn't let it show, of course, but I cried a little that first night in my bunk, and kissed the lock of hair Eugene had given me.

I already knew, at that point, that I was in love with him. It had hit me as I listened to him impersonating me (or himself) to the Hoovers. I might have told him so when I came up the stairs, but Irene was there, so I didn't. And I didn't afterwards either, both because I was somehow dating her, and because I only had a few days left on Earth. It didn't seem worth it, when I didn't think I was going to see either of them again.

It was only as I prepared to leave the planet that I realised how much I wanted to stay, and the discovery that I could go back, that I could have a life _and_ a career in space, was a blessing I'd never expected to receive.

Theses days I'm more inclined to think it was a curse.

I was ready to die. Now I'm terrified to.

My head comes to rest on his chest, above his heart. I don't want to lose this. I want to wake up with Eugene lying next to me tomorrow morning and all the mornings after that as much as I ever wanted to see Titan.

_Lub-dub. Lub-dub._

Jerome, Jerome, the metronome.

I've always loved this sound. It's what I cling to during those torture sessions they call workouts. But the contrast between this steady beat and the feeble skittering of my own pulse isn't much of a comfort tonight.

I slip out of the bed and go to the living room. The clock glows bright in the darkness – 2349. Not long now.

I try not to watch the clock. I look out the window instead, towards the beach. I can still see the red numbers reflected in the glass.

"Do you have any idea what time it is, Vincent?"

I almost jump. I hadn't heard him come in.

"It's 2352," I answer, and see him realise.

"I forgot." He wheels over to my side. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"I didn't see the point. It's not as if you know that much about ..."

"Dying? Believe it or not, I've had a little experience in that area."

"About _waiting_ to die."

"Well -"

"No. What could you possibly know about it?" Most normal people don't use the last minutes of their lives to pick fights with the ones they love. But I can't stop the words coming out. "It's different for you. Every time you faced death it was because you ran to meet it. Your life expectancy is … God, Eugene, you'll practically live forever. You'll never have to face a death you don't want, that you'd give anything to ..."

"I know enough about it to know that time slows down. And in the instant between taking the step and feeling it begin there's enough time to imagine every agonising detail and start to wonder if life was really all that bad compared to what you just signed up for." His voice is oddly gentle as he says "I did want death, but I know what it's like to be afraid of dying."

Then his arm is around me and I'm leaning into him, hanging on with all my strength and wishing I never had to let go.

"What are you gonna do?" I find myself asking.

"What else? Chuck you in the incinerator. We can't afford to leave any evidence lying around."

"Could you be serious?"

"Why on earth would I do that? This whole thing is ridiculous. You're not dying tonight."

We don't talk for the next few minutes. When the clock finally clicks over to 0000 I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding.

"Told you so," says Eugene, and kisses my cheek. "Happy birthday. Now let's go back to bed."

"I'm not dead," I say. I shouldn't be so shocked about that.

"Of course not," he snaps. "Did you really think thirty year old technology could predict someone's death down to the minute? What?"

He must have felt me go rigid. "I was born at 6:18."

"What time zone?"

I actually try to remember before he growls "For God's sake!" and I laugh.

"It's superstition. I know." But that doesn't mean I'll be able to fall asleep before I've survived the next six hours and eighteen minutes. Or that after that, I won't spend the rest of the year just waiting for my heart to give out. I used to be so good at ignoring this. Now that the deadline is string me in the face, it's getting harder to pretend I don't have a time bomb in my chest.

"Vincent. Look at me." Eugene's eyes have gone hard and intense. "It doesn't matter how accurate the machines were. They're _wrong_. You're not going to die. I've never met anyone, Valid or not, with a heart like yours. That doctor of yours will tell you if you don't believe me. You've been to space. You go through Gattaca training sessions every week and no-one there can keep up with you. You're fine. You know all this."

"I guess I do. Still … thank you."

I kiss him. Things progress steadily for the next few minutes until he pulls back.

"I'm not saying I object," he says "but don't you have to get in early tomorrow … uh, today?"

"I called in dead."

"You didn't really think that you'd ..."

"No, not really. I just figured that whatever happened tonight, I wouldn't feel much like working afterwards."

"Jerome Morrow skipping work. The world must be coming to an end."

"Apparently not."

I'd tried not to believe what the world told me. I'd said they had no idea what my limits were, and been proven right. Still, whenever I pictured my future it had never gone beyond thirty. Dying young was a fact of life for me – just as, I imagine, glorious success was a fact of life for Eugene.

Neither of us had gotten what we expected from life. But I, at least, had gotten everything I wanted. And now the future ahead of us is a blank slate – no more dreams to chase or private mountains to scale, no sword of Damocles dangling over my head. Just years of endless possibilities. There's nothing we couldn't do. After all, we're Jerome Morrow.


	6. Fear

When he walked through the door, Vincent barely glanced at me before striding through to the kitchen. I groaned silently. I knew that look. Last time it had appeared, it was because someone at Gattaca had been beaten to death with his own keyboard. After taking a moment to mourn the dream I'd briefly cherished of a peaceful life, I followed him. I watched in silence as he poured a drink and bolted it down.

"How was your day?" I asked eventually.

"Well." He exhaled slowly. "They offered to send me back up."

"Oh." My eyes went to the bottle in front of him – could he be celebrating rather than panicking? I poured a glass for myself. "Congratulations. What's the mission?"

"A twenty-six month research voyage to Oberon."

I took a deep swallow to put off answering for a second or two. It burned on the way down my throat. My tolerance for this stuff had been severely reduced after two years of enforced abstinence.

My voice was pleasingly normal as I said "For those of us who aren't intimately familiar with the solar system?"

"It's the outermost moon of Uranus. Ninth largest moon in the solar system. They want to look for a layer of liquid water surrounding the core."

"Would that be a significant find?"

He gave a slight shrug. "To the scientists who suggested it, at least."

I nodded as I lifted the glass to my lips again. I wasn't sure what else there was to say. Twenty-six months …

"I'm going to turn it down."

My head snapped up. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I don't want to go."

"It's space travel. Of course you want to go, it's all you've ever wanted."

"That's not quite true. It was all I wanted for a long time, but lately I've found a lot to want down here too."

"As much as you want what's up there? You look at the stars every night."

"But right now I'm looking at you." He reached out to take my hand. "I'm OK with giving up space travel if it means I get to keep this."

It all fell into place, and I finally understood why he was doing this. After what had happened last time he went up, it made sense that he'd be wary of leaving Earth again. I clasped his hand in return.

"I'll still be here when you get back," I promised. Though I had wondered how I would survive for more than two years without him, it was a purely rhetorical question. I could wait for as long as I had to.

"And what if I don't come back?"

There was no easy answer to that. I knew what he wanted me to say – it was what I wanted to say too. I'd undergone a fairly radical change in perspective over the last few months, and I sincerely wanted to be the kind of person who could choose to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. Not only was suicide (in my experience) extremely painful and very difficult to get right, it was one of the most cowardly and selfish acts a person could commit. I thought of Howard, the Good Samaritan who'd burned his arms beating the flames out of my clothes, watching from next door as my body was carried away. Of Ingrid burying her face in her hands and reflecting on the countless, hopeless hours of work she'd put into making me whole again. Of Beth weeping uncontrollably, her kind heart and her illusions of a just world shattered. But then I thought of sitting alone in this room as Vincent's death was reported on the news. Of spending the rest of my life – and oh God, it would be a _long_ life – without him, without his voice and his touch and his taste. Of never experiencing his body fitting perfectly against mine as we lay in bed, the weight of his arms around me or our fingers tangled together again. Really, in a world like that I might as well be dead.

"I don't know," I admitted quietly.

"I'd rather we never have to find out," he said. "Why should we risk it? My mother and her friends used to tell me I'd forget about being an astronaut the day I got a girlfriend. And they were obviously wrong about the 'girl' part, but ..."

"Vincent, I want you to think about this very carefully," I interrupted. "Are you telling me that your lifelong ambition was just a case of blue balls?"

"Of course not. That's ridiculous."

"So what are you trying to say?"

"A lot of kids go through that kind of obsession with what they want to be when they grow up, but most people end up channelling at least some of that drive into things like … well, having a social life. Making friends, falling in love. Maybe it's time I moved on to a more grown-up dream instead of clinging to this one. I mean, what did you want to be when you were six?"

"An Olympic gold medallist."

"Should have seen that coming," he muttered. "But maybe that proves my point. You didn't get that, but your life is still -"

"I stepped in front of a car," I reminded him icily. "I climbed into an incinerator and pulled the switch. I spent two years hiding from the world in an underground hospital. You do _not_ want to be anything like me. And I'm not going to let you throw away your dreams because you think I need babysitting!"

"I wasn't talking about that," he said, and looked genuinely surprised. "Maybe I'm just an asshole, but it didn't even occur to me. When I said what if I don't come back, I meant … I don't want to die."

"We've been through this. You are not going to die!"

"You don't know that! It was a miracle I survived the first time. And besides, it's different now."

"Because you're thirty?"

"Because I care about surviving this time!"

I closed my eyes briefly. "Run that by me again?"

"I don't know if I can explain in a way that'll make sense to anyone else."

I just looked at him until he gave in.

"You know those races with my brother I told you about?" I nodded, and he continued "He was a stronger swimmer than I was. He always won. Except for two times. And the difference, the thing that gave me the edge, was that those times I put everything I had into going on. I didn't save anything for the swim back. For someone like me, who wasn't born for any of this, the only way I can hope to achieve something is to forget about everything else and give it 100%. But I can't do that this time, I've got too much to lose. I _want _to come home – I'll always be looking over my shoulder, holding some strength in reserve – and so I'll die."

And he wouldn't be budged from that position, regardless of my efforts to tell him how stupid it was. We kept at it for quite a while before finally giving up and declaring a stalemate. The stony silence lasted until we went to bed.

I stared up at the ceiling and quietly boiled with frustration. He never listened to me. Just last week, when he thought he was going to die, he'd planned to do it alone while I slept in the other room. Because I wouldn't understand. I was probably one of the best-equipped people in the world to understand about that! But he refused to consider the idea that I could have a useful perspective about … anything, really.

"Do you trust me?" I asked, softly enough that he could have pretended not to hear.

"You know I do."

"Then why don't you listen to me?" I didn't like the pleading tone in my voice, but I'd used up my anger hours ago. "I've done this. I know what it's like to live without a purpose. You don't want that. I don't want that to happen to you."

"I've heard that there are people out there who think their lives have meaning regardless of their careers." He sounded almost wistful as he said "Do you think we could try that? Not living for some _purpose_, just living?"

"It doesn't sound like you."

"Wouldn't you like me if I wasn't a monomaniacal lunatic?"

His hand slid under my shirt, stroking along the line just above where my sensation stopped. The fact that he could find that spot so easily, and in the dark, left me completely disinclined to keep arguing with him.

"It'd be one less thing we have in common. But I'll always like you if you keep touching me like that."

* * *

I was woken the next morning by an elbow to the ribs and a frantic "Eugene!" I rolled over, and the complaint I'd planned to make died on my lips as I saw Vincent's face. It was pale, ashen and shiny with sweat.

"Chest hurts..." he wheezed, and I felt a lead weight drop into my stomach.

"For how long?"

"'Bout an hour."

"_What?_ And you didn't say anything?"

"Thought it'd go away … if I waited." His face contorted into a grimace as he added, unnecessarily, "It got worse."

No time to bawl him out for that piece of idiocy. I had to get to a phone, call someone who could help. I scrambled over the top of him to reach for the phone beside the bed. I at least had the presence of mind to lie across his stomach instead of his chest, but I still must have been crushing him, and I hated myself for it as I heard him struggling to breathe.

As I picked up the phone, however, I froze. Who could I call? The ambulance would be the obvious choice for anyone else, but in our case … The first thing they'd do would be take a blood sample, and then they'd know. And while prison would be a small price to pay for keeping him alive, it was hardly a tempting option. Just before I dialled the last 1, an alternative finally occurred to me. Dr Cowper.

Her voice was terse when she picked up. "Jerome, I know I said that you could call me at any time, but -"

"You need to come. Vincent's having a heart attack. I live at -"

"Hold on. Who's Vincent?"

We had no time to get into that explanation. "What does it matter who he is? He's having a heart attack! Help him!"

"OK. Calm down. I need you to hang up now and call for an ambulance."

"No! I can't!"

"I'll call one for you. What did you say the address -"

"Look, you don't understand -"

"I understand that he needs -"

"He's me, he's Jerome, we can't call the authorities. Any of them."

"Goddamn it. All right, I'm on my way."

I gave her the address and the code for the door, then turned my attention back to Vincent. I'd been so wrapped up in that stupid conversation that I hadn't noticed when his eyes fell closed.

"Vincent?" I pressed my ear against his chest. Nothing. His heart had stopped. "Fuck!" I clasped my hands and began pumping on his chest. "No. You're not doing this! You're not going to die on me!" God only knows how long we stayed like that, him lying unconscious (_dead_) with me pounding away at his chest. It felt like hours. My arms started to ache but I knew I'd keep it up until I passed out myself. At last, I heard a door open.

"Down here!"

From the sound of her footsteps, I could tell she was running. I knew Ingrid Cowper was the right choice.

When she burst into the room, she came to a halt. "What are you doing?"

"You're the bloody doctor, can't you recognise CPR?" I snapped. "Just come here!"

She hurried over and crouched by the bed. "OK, you need to stop that for a second -"

"What the hell do you -"

"-so I can check for a pulse!" she continued, raising her voice.

I stopped. She pressed her fingers against his throat and, after what may well have been the longest two seconds of my life, she nodded.

"Looks like you got it beating again. Good work." She stood up. "We have to get him to hospital. Is there are a robe or something I can cover him with?"

"In the closet."

She yanked it open and pulled one out (mine, though I didn't bother to mention it). "I need to borrow that," she said, jerking her head towards my chair as she set about wrapping him in the dressing gown.

"Why?"

"I can hardly carry him, he's at least a head taller than I am."

I forced myself to resist the irrational urge to grab Vincent and hang as tightly as I could, and let her slide him off the bed and into the chair. It was only as she pushed it out of the room that it really clicked.

"Oi! What am I supposed to do?"

"Not important. You're not my patient right now."

"You can't just leave me stuck here! I need to go with him!"

"Get a friend to bring you in," she called from the other room.

"What, with no chair?"

Her footsteps came to a halt, and I heard a muffled curse. So she wasn't just being callous. In all the rush, she'd forgotten I was crippled.

"Someone from St. Roch's will come to get you," she said finally, and the front door swung closed behind them.

The house was suddenly very empty and much too quiet. I leaned back against the pillow, then sat straight back up again. I was exhausted, but the hollow feeling in my chest seemed to be burning, filling me with a kind of restless energy. After a few minutes I was bouncing off the walls with frustration – or I would have been if I could move from the bed. I was naked and alone and trapped in my own bedroom. Vincent was out there somewhere, maybe dying, maybe dead, and there was nothing I could do to help him. I couldn't even be by his side. Couldn't even know whether he was still alive. Couldn't even fucking move!

I seriously considered throwing myself on the floor and crawling over to the cupboard to get dressed, just to do _something_, and save a little time when the orderly or whoever got here. But the thought of being found like that was just too humiliating, and I stayed where I was.

At last, I heard a knock at the door. "Mr Morrow?" called a man's voice.

"Through here. About time you showed up!"

He stepped into the room, pushing an empty chair in front of him. "I'm here to -"

"Yes, I know. It took you long enough. Closet's there, get me something to put on."

He raised his eyebrows at me, and I barely restrained myself from screaming. Not this shit again.

"I'm not a servant, you know," he said levelly, with quiet self-assurance that made me want to slam his head into the nearest wall.

"Really? Good to know! I was under the impression that you were being paid to help me get to St Roch's so I can find out whether my friend is alive or dead. I'm terribly sorry to neglect the protocol like this – it's just that I have trouble remembering whether I'm just supposed to bow or if I need to kiss your hand too. Well, and that I don't give a damn about being polite to you. Now either bring me my clothes or give me that chair and get the fuck out!"

He brought the clothes over to the bed in subdued silence, and offered to help me dress. I was pissed enough at him to want to simply kick him out and catch a taxi to the hospital, and rattled enough that I hated the thought of anyone touching me at that moment. But I was in enough of a hurry to make both those things seem unimportant, and I accepted his help.

"He was alive when I left," he said as he pushed me to the car.

We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

* * *

Ingrid met me as I came in.

"Where is he?"

"Theatre. I'm glad you finally got here – since he's not in a position to talk to us, I need you to give me some information."

"Will it be on the record?"

"My records? Yes. The government's? Absolutely not. And that's the only promise I'm going to make about that, so it'll have to be enough. Now. First of all, I need to know what he was doing before the attack."

"Sleeping."

"I hope you understand how important it is for his treatment that you answer these questions accurately and completely."

"Of course I know that."

"Considering what I saw when I arrived on the scene..."

Oh. It occurred to me for the first time what that must have looked like to her: the two of us naked in bed together, a tangle of sheets and limbs. No wonder she was sceptical.

"I'm not trying to hide the fact that we're sleeping together. It's no more of a secret than any other aspect of our relationship. He really was asleep. He said the chest pains woke him up, but he waited an hour before he decided to tell me about it."

"All right." She made a note on her clipboard, then continued with the questions. Some I could answer, and others I couldn't. I knew his profile by heart, though that wasn't particularly useful as they had copies of their own. I could describe his diet and exercise routine, his medical history for the better part of the past decade and his relationship with anaesthesia. But when it came to family history and childhood ailments, I knew nothing. We'd never discussed it.

Ingrid couldn't tell me if he was going to be all right. "We see miracles every day in this hospital. But I'm not a cardiologist. I don't know."

"Guess."

"All right, but I warn you, you won't like it." She took a deep breath before continuing. "He's doing everything right, Jerome. Yes, no doctor would actually encourage the amount of physical strain he puts himself through, but by all accounts he was managing wonderfully. He has a truly phenomenal level of fitness for someone with his profile."

"I don't understand. How is this bad news?"

"The bad news is that he still had a heart attack. The only advice we can give him is to take it easy, but it wasn't physical exertion that caused this. It wasn't anything in his lifestyle. The problem is with his heart itself, and there isn't a lot we can do about that."

"Not a lot. Is there anything? If the problem is his heart, what about a transplant?"

She shook her head. "There are procedures. Lists of waiting recipients. Organs don't grow on trees, and no-one would be willing to donate a heart to an Invalid whose profile says he _should_ be dying."

"I will."

"What?"

"He can have my heart. I've given him everything else, why not this?" I was vaguely aware that what I was saying was crazy, but that seemed like a secondary concern at the moment.

She looked at me seriously for a few seconds. "You're obviously in shock. I'll prescribe a mild tranquilliser -"

"I'm perfectly fucking tranquil and you're not giving me any drugs until I've seen him."

"Nothing mind-altering, just something to help you remain rational. It is possible for a living person to donate certain organs, but as everyone knows, a heart is not one of them. And the two of you don't even have the same blood type, so any attempt to do so would be a _completely pointless gesture_. Do you understand?"

She glared at me, and I glared back. She thought she knew me just because she'd guessed how I got the injuries she treated me for. If she thought that I would ever put Vincent through the kind of fear I'd faced today she didn't know a thing.

* * *

He was in surgery for four hours, and I almost gave myself a heart attack waiting for him to come out. When I was finally allowed to see him, it was hardly less terrifying. He looked half dead. Medical gadgets were a part of daily life for us, so the ones he was hooked up to now shouldn't have been a shock to me, but I'd never seen any that made him look … so young, and so unhealthy. His hand was slightly cold to the touch, and hung limply in mine.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: I am so sorry, you guys. I never meant to leave you hanging that way after the last chapter, but life and writer's block and various other things got in the way, and before I knew it, it'd been ten months since my last update. Thank you to all the reviewers who took the time to say they're still interested in seeing the end, I hope this doesn't disappoint. Not to drag it out, but it's not _quite _the end yet – there's an epilogue coming after this (which I swear will be up by the end of the year).

* * *

I remembered pain. And the knowledge, absolutely certain this time, that this was it, I was going to die. Then there was nothing but blackness, and I thought that was death.

But if it was, then this had to be heaven, and that wasn't possible. For one thing, I still hurt. My head ached, and my chest, and my hand seemed to be caught in a vice. I felt faintly nauseous and utterly exhausted. But it couldn't be hell, either. I was lying somewhere almost comfortable, light filtered through my eyelids, and when I concentrated on the pain in my hand I realised that someone was squeezing it.

"Eugene?"

"Yes?"

"That hurts."

"Obviously. You spent the last four hours being hacked at with scalpels."

"I mean my hand."

"Ah." His grip loosened. "Sorry."

I forced my eyes open. I saw blurry white, and the outline of his face.

"Do you have my glasses?"

"They're at home. I'll pick them up next time I get a chance."

"Is this a hospital? I don't remember anything since I woke you."

"You wouldn't. You were unconscious."

"So I passed out," I said slowly. "I thought I was dead."

"You were for a couple of minutes. Technically."

The prediction was right, then. They always said I'd die at thirty, and a week after my birthday, here I was. The memory of the relief and hope I'd felt that night swept over me like a mockery. I felt my eyes start to burn, but struggled to keep myself in check. Eugene despised weakness. In himself most of all, but in me almost as much.

"Did you do it on purpose, to prove your point?" he asked. To my astonishment, his voice cracked on the next words. "It worked. There's not a chance in hell you're going to Oberon after today."

Then he was back to crushing my hand. I squeezed back (or tried to – there didn't seem to be any strength left in me) and we sat in silence, drawing comfort from the fact that, for now, we were both still here.

"Just a week after I turned thirty," I said eventually. "Those doctors must have known what they were talking about after all."

I meant it as a joke, sort of, but apparently Eugene didn't take it that way.

"No," he said, glaring at me. "They didn't. In case you haven't noticed, you're still alive – because they may have predicted when your heart would give out, but they forgot to take into account the fact that medical science has uses besides genetic engineering!"

"Always nice to meet someone outside my colleagues who appreciates that," said a voice from the doorway. "My predecessors were treating congenital valve defects long before anyone was engineered against them. But it's all about prevention these days, so they don't bother learning how to cure anymore."

I automatically turned to look at him, but could only make out that he was tall and grey-haired.

"Good morning, Mr Freeman. Glad to see you've woken up. I'm Timothy Harburg, the guy who put your heart back together for you just now." He pulled another chair over to the bed and sat down. "How are you feeling?"

"Groggy. And my chest is a little painful. But fine, apart from that."

"Do you feel up to having a talk about what went wrong with you and what we're doing about fixing it?"

"Yes."

"Well then. You experienced what we call a myocardial infarction –"

"Hang on," interrupted Eugene. "Aren't you going to ask me to leave?"

"The door's right there if you want to go."

"I don't – but –"

"Last time we were here we were told it's against policy for anyone to be present during consultations with doctors," I finished.

Harburg nodded. "Unless they're family."

"You haven't even asked who I am," Eugene pointed out after it became clear that the doctor thought that was sufficient explanation.

A sigh. "Look, I don't know who you've been talking to, but they obviously didn't have their facts straight. We have a very strict confidentiality policy, that's true – but I'm not going to ask who you are, because anyone who's worked here more than a month knows the patient's anonymous lookalike is considered next of kin. All right?" When neither of us protested, he continued. "Now, as I was saying. Myocardial infarction – a heart attack, in layman's terms, and I'm sure you've already figured out that's what happened to you. And that led to your heart stopping when it wasn't getting enough blood. But someone – I'm guessing it was you?" he said, turning to Eugene, who nodded. "Gave you CPR, and got it beating again. Cracked a couple of ribs in the process, I might add, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few bones."

I instinctively reached for Eugene's hand again. (He'd withdrawn it upon Harburg's arrival.) "Thanks," I said.

He gave a slight shrug. "Sorry about your ribs."

And that was that. I doubted that we'd ever mention it again. It's not that I wasn't grateful he'd saved me – of course I was. But there was so much gratitude between us already, for so many reasons, that there was no sense in keeping track anymore. The debt could never be paid, in any case, because there was nothing left that I could give him. We already shared a name, a life, our bodies, all our worldly possessions, and if he asked me for anything I'd do it in a heartbeat – but not because he'd saved my life or helped me reach the stars. Just because it was him.

"Do you want a minute?" asked Harburg gruffly. I got the impression that tact wasn't in his nature, just something he'd had to learn over the course of his career.

"No, we're done," Eugene answered for us both.

"You're men after my own heart, then. Most of my patients tend to get pretty emotional after a brush with death."

"We _were_ being emotional."

"What caused the heart attack?" I asked. It seemed like an inane question, considering I'd known this was coming all my life, but I was hoping the doctor would provide me with a more concrete answer than 'fate'. "My defective valves?"

"Indirectly," Harburg answered. "That's what caused the huge blood clot that lodged itself in your coronary artery. And it should have been obvious to anyone with a medical degree that something of the sort was bound to happen before long. I've put you on anticoagulants to see if we can stop it happening again. You should have been on them _years_ ago."

That last sentence was spoken very pointedly, as though implying it was my fault that I hadn't been. There may have been some truth to that, actually – I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a doctor as myself.

"Additionally, when you're sufficiently recovered, I think you could benefit from a valve transplant. We'll have check-ups over the next couple of months, I'll let you know when it's time."

"Will that be possible?" asked Eugene, leaning forward. "Dr Cowper was insistent that there are regulations about who's eligible for transplants, and that Invalids almost never are."

"There are ways around that," said Harburg, waving a hand dismissively. "Ingrid's a good doctor, but she won't be a great one until she stops trying to play by the rules. But in this case, it's not an issue. We're talking a couple of valves here, not the whole heart. We call it a transplant, but the truth is it'll be more like a prosthesis."

This blurred figure of Timothy Harburg was beginning to look like an angel to me. Could this really be all it took to prevent my heart problems – some medication and a few prosthetic valves? Why had no-one ever told me this before?

_It's all about prevention these days, so they don't bother learning how to cure anymore._

"But I'm not making any guarantees," he warned. "This will help, but the rate of relapse for heart attacks is somewhere between one in five and one in ten. And in that spirit, there are some changes you'll need to make if you want to stop this from happening again. I understand you're working for Gattaca?"

"Yes."

"I've heard about their insistence on physical and mental excellence in their employees. Their PT program is legendary. I expect you to sit out for at least the next month."

"I can't just sit out," I protested automatically, though my body was telling me very clearly that I could hardly do anything else. "It's mandatory."

"I'll write you a note excusing you."

"You can't tell them -"

"Oh ye of little faith," said Harburg placidly. "I've been working in this field since before you were born, and I'm reasonably good at it. It so happens that I have a subtle, brilliant scheme to deal with that problem: we're going to _lie_. The note will say you're recovering from some other kind of surgery. I think … you had a tumour removed."

"Won't work," said Eugene. "He's there under my name, and I can't get cancer."

Harburg sighed. "_Valids_," he muttered. "This is what's wrong with you kids. You think your genes are perfect, so you must be invincible. You may not be genetically predisposed to cancer, but of course you can get it. Anyone can. Particularly astronauts, considering the amount of cosmic radiation they're exposed to every launch. And speaking of which, that's one excuse you can use for why you never go up again."

"What?" I said.

"You're never going up again," repeated Harburg. "And just so we're absolutely clear, everything else I've told you today has been my medical opinion. This, on the other hand, is a threat. I'll keep an eye on the upcoming launches, and as soon as I see your name attached to any of them you'll be outed you to your bosses and the police."

"_What?_" I said more loudly.

"You heard."

"I thought you worked here because you wanted to _help_ Invalids."

"I work in medicine because I want to help _people_," he shot back. "If you go back to space after what happened today, you're not just risking your own life – I'd be inclined to let you do that – you're risking the lives of your colleagues too. And that's not something I'm prepared to accept. You can keep your job if you must, chart courses and so on, but stay off the ships. I'm giving you a chance to be a man and step down gracefully, but if you don't, I'll stop you."

With that, he gave a curt nod and walked out. I watched him go in stunned silence. The angel who'd offered me salvation had picked up a fiery sword and barred me from Eden. I was alive. I was going to get treatment for my heart. That was good. But … what the hell was the point of any of it if I was right back where I was before, bound to the earth forever because people insisted that was all my body was fit for?

"He won't do it, you know," said Eugene. "He won't get a chance. If you try anything so stupid, _I'll_ stop you before he even hears about it."

It wasn't just like before. It was worse. Now even Eugene was against me.

"I don't want you protecting me!" I growled, with what some dispassionate corner of my brain told me was more venom than he deserved.

"I don't want you dead. So I guess that makes us even."

He sounded just like my father – and my mother, my brother, my teachers, everyone who'd ever tried to keep me down 'for my own good'. And to make it worse, I _knew _there was nothing malicious about his change of attitude. He really was just trying to keep me alive. They all were. But that kind of concern didn't feel like love to me, it felt like an insult.

"Go away," I said thickly.

"Excuse me?"

He sounded taken aback, almost hurt, and the part of me that wasn't quietly bubbling with anger was sorry. I hadn't meant it to come out that way. I just needed privacy to come to terms with Harburg's ultimatum.

"Sorry," I said. I did my best to smile.

Eugene didn't smile back. He didn't go away either. "I know you don't like it. But you were unconscious – you didn't see – you nearly _died_ this morning. You still look like death warmed up. You can't expect me not to feel protective."

"I know. Believe me, Eugene – I get it. I was talking about quitting anyway last night. But there's a difference between walking away from something and being dragged away, you know? I just need some time alone, to think."

After being forced to promise that I wouldn't change my mind and decide to prove Harburg wrong 'just like a child who only wants to play with a toy when you say he can't have it', I was finally left alone to contemplate my fate.

For most of my life, I didn't have much use for religion. I always knew, however, that I wouldn't be here without it – it was my mother's belief that all life is sacred and everything has a purpose which stopped her from taking the easy, sensible way out of the dilemma she found herself in thirty odd years ago. And recently, for the first time in my life, I'd begun to consider the possibility that her faith was more than an illusion. When the day of my foretold death approached, I thought of her, of her strings of rosary beads, murmured prayers and insistence that 'God child' was an accolade, not an insult. In the depths of my fear, I prayed to my mother's God. I said that I would give _anything_ in exchange for my life.

Somehow, miraculously, it seemed to have worked. I'd survived, and now I was paying the price for that mercy. Now I could really understand the answer Eugene gave when I asked if his own brushes with death had made him think about God: No empty, mindless universe could have such a sick sense of humour. Part of my soul wanted to protest 'This isn't what I meant!', but the rational part of me knew that wasn't true. I'd promised anything, and meant it. If God had come to me in person that night and asked me to give up space travel forever, I would have willingly accepted the deal. I'd gotten everything I asked for – a second chance at life – and even if the terms were harsh, I wasn't stupid enough to throw that away.

* * *

I saw Harburg again a week later to negotiate my release. One of the things I like about the underground nature of this hospital is their willingness to accommodate requests like "get me the hell out of here as soon as medically possible" - but, unfortunately, I still had to listen to a very detailed list of what I was not to do.

"... and no exercise. In the interest of plugging loopholes, that means nothing that will raise your heartrate more than a short, gentle walk. At least, not unless you're being supervised by a doctor who is aware of your medical history. Understood?"

"Yes."

"All right. Now that's out of the way, you're free to go – but there's one thing we have to settle before you do. The bill."

He named an amount that made me wince, and Eugene made an inarticulate sound of disgust.

"I should have guessed. Everyone on the black market's a fucking mercenary, aren't they?"

I didn't exactly disagree. We weren't poor, even accounting for the percentage of my paycheque that went to German. But after we'd already paid for extensive burns treatment this year …

"Mercenary?" Harburg leaned forward, eyes narrowed, his voice gone low and almost ominous. "Forty years ago, my colleagues and I poured a small fortune into raising this hospital out of the ground. Some of us are here out of moral conviction, some are working off a debt, some have nowhere else to go – but every one of us is breaking the law by helping the ones respectable medical institutions won't touch. We're risking our medical licences – risking criminal charges – and forswearing any chance of making it big in this field. This is a charity. But the legitimate business we do here isn't enough to finance it, and if we tried to offer our services for free we'd be reduced to doling out aspirin in dark alleys. So I'm sorry for whatever financial problems you have, but you are going to pay." After waiting a few moments to see that what he'd said had sunk in, he continued "But there are forms of payment other than cash, if you'd prefer."

Now we were getting to the point. Heart surgeons aren't responsible for their patients' bills. He wouldn't be having this conversation with us unless he was after something in particular.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I want your body," he replied, looking straight at Eugene.

We exchanged brief looks of incredulity. _No. He can't have meant that the way it sounded._

"Sorry, but I'm afraid not," said Eugene in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "Vincent has a prior claim."

"Since you'd be paying his debts, I don't think he'd have much ground to object."

It was becoming less and less likely that this was a misunderstanding. What kind of pervert would even want … the same thing I wanted. But that was different.

"Besides, I won't take anything from you until after you're dead. He'll probably be long gone by then anyway – no offence meant, of course."

_Very_ different. What the hell?

He looked at me, puzzled, and I realised I'd said that aloud. "Remember the conversation we had about the ways of getting around transplant regulations? This is one of them. Leave your body to this hospital, and we'll consider the high quality organ donations more than enough payment for the surgery and subsequent care."

"Human organs as currency? That sounds awfully illegal to me," commented Eugene.

"Possibly. But somehow I doubt that will be a huge stumbling block for you."

"Not only illegal – it sounds unenforceable. No court would acknowledge that kind of deal, and I don't see what you could do about it if someone said yes then decided on their death bed that they'd rather be scattered over the ocean. Relying on an honour system isn't the best plan for dealing with criminals, which anyone who agreed to this _very illegal_ -"

"He isn't threatening to let the cheque bounce," I interrupted. I hadn't thought I'd ever be able to speak to the doctor again without laughing hysterically or dying of embarrassment, but Eugene was forcing my hand. Harburg looked ready to strangle him. "He doesn't care what happens to his body. This is his idea of making conversation."

"I … see," said Haburg slowly. "Well, as you pointed out, we _are_ criminals here. White collar criminals by preference, of course, but we can be flexible. And the nature of our work at this hospital gives us connections to the kind of people who tend to have even fewer scruples about legality than we do. Now, are you going to sign or does someone have to break your thumbs to convince you we know how this works?"

"I was just asking. Of course I'll do it, it's the easiest payment plan I've ever heard of."

* * *

There were five messages waiting for me when I got home.

The first was from Lamar. He calmly wished me well, and said that since I hadn't seemed quite myself when I told him he could say I was abducted by aliens for all I cared, he'd taken the liberty of dipping into my unused vacation time to explain my absence from work.

The next was from my supervisor, who wanted to make it clear that he did not take kindly to employees taking off on holiday without requesting permission in advance. The fact that I'd been his predecessor's golden boy did not put me above the rules, and he was seriously considering withdrawing my offer to join the Oberon mission.

German, saying that while of course the hospital wouldn't tell him anything, he'd be obliged if someone would let him know whether or not I was dead. He did have the decency to say he hoped I was not, though the effect was spoiled by his comment that he'd probably find out soon enough in any case, since my paycheque was due next week.

Cesar's message seemed to be meant for Eugene. He simply said that while he assumed there wouldn't be a funeral, he'd send a wreath unless that would arouse suspicion among the neighbours. Optimistic as always.

Irene said that she was concerned. Her exact words. "Jerome … I mean, Vincent. This is Irene Cassini. I haven't seen you at work, and I'm concerned." Once, a lifetime ago, I would have found the odd formality of that message endearing. Now, however, the thought of answering her – or any of them, actually – made my head ache. I would have to do it, of course, and sooner rather than later. Just not now.

I pushed back from the desk. The idea of lying down during the day seemed somehow shameful; but they'd told me to rest, and I was exhausted. "I'm going to bed," I said finally, giving in.

Eugene nodded. "I'll go with you."

"The doctor was _very_ specific," I reminded him. "Not for at least three weeks."

"That's not what I was talking about. Someone needs to make sure you don't wake up dead." He sighed, and added "Besides, the last time I got to touch you was when I was giving you CPR."

There was a faint bruise on my right hand that said otherwise, but I didn't argue the point. I did miss the kind of touch that didn't leave bruises, after all.

"Fine. Let's go."

When we got to the bedroom, I started to lift the hem of my shirt, then hesitated as the twinge in my ribs reminded me what lay underneath. "Could you look somewhere else?" I asked.

"Why?"

"Because – oh, for God's sake, never mind." I kicked off my shoes and lay down. Explaining why I suddenly didn't want him looking at my bare chest or letting him see the strapped ribs, fresh scar, patches of mottled purple bruises and clear signs of recent weight loss – I didn't know which would be worse. They'd both get me the same look of pity. I could sleep in my clothes.

He pulled himself up onto the bed beside me. "I mean it. Why? It's one scar. It can't be worse than the ones I was covered with when you first kissed me. If you didn't care about those, why would I care about this?"

All right, maybe I'd underestimated him a little. I closed my eyes wearily. "It's not just the scar."

"You look perfectly normal for someone just out of hospital."

"Exactly. I look weak, and ill – no-one looking at me now would ever believe I'm you."

Eugene was silent for a while. At last, he said "Do you have to be?"

That caught my interest. "Sorry?"

"Do you want to stay at Gattaca now there's no chance of going back up?"

I couldn't say I did. Gattaca itself had never been more than a means to an end. But after that end had been accomplished, I'd stayed there, because … where else would I go? This was the life I'd built for myself, and if nothing else, it was a hell of a lot better than what I'd left behind.

"Not particularly. But I'd still much rather be a navigator than a janitor."

"Obviously. I wasn't suggesting that."

"What do you suggest I do, then?"

"We could go travelling."

That phrase set off faint alarm bells, and I raised my head up to look at him.

He rolled his eyes. "It's not a euphemism. You've been to Titan, but never set foot outside the USA. You'd be surprised how many countries out there would welcome you even with your own profile – birth rates have been dropping since people stopped conceiving the old-fashioned way, and some places use immigration to make up the difference."

"Does 'some places' mean 'third world places'?"

"Not always. But there are things we could do here too – there are jobs that can be done online, where you never have to meet the person who hires you. No-one would ever know there were two of us. Or we could get more involved in the black market. There are always opportunities there, and if anyone understands the industry, we do."

Now that was an interesting idea.

"Jerome Morrow is still young," I said, thinking out loud. "He's already had very successful careers in two different fields. No-one would be surprised if a man like that decided to expand his horizons, branch off into a new area – and with that profile and that resume, who'd turn him down?"

"It shouldn't be too hard for us to find another angst ridden Invalid with dreams of glory," said Eugene. "If we do it right, we could more than make back the money German got out of us this time."

Becoming Jerome Morrow had given me a new life. Now that I didn't need the name to be happy anymore, it seemed only fitting to pass it on and give someone else the second chance they wanted so badly.

I found myself drifting off as Eugene talked about where we could look for candidates. My post-hospital exhaustion didn't bother me anymore, however. I might as well take the rest while I could get it – from what I remembered of the transition, we were going to have a lot on our plates when we found our man.


End file.
